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An East Harlem playwright wants to make El Barrio the city’s undisputed Latino cultural center by designating an uptown theater district that would showcase four underutilized auditoriums. The El Barrio Theatre Development Project, dubbed ELBA, would include the Hecksher Theatre, the Red Carpet Theatre, the Julia De Burgos Cultural Center Theatre and the Poet’s Den Theatre.

Eugene Rodriguez

An East Harlem playwright wants to make El Barrio the city’s undisputed Latino cultural center by designating an uptown theater district that would showcase four underutilized auditoriums.

“This community needs an injection of money,” said Eugene Rodriguez, a 67-year-old playwright and head of the Puerto Rican Intercultural Drama Ensemble. “We are a train ride away from Broadway. We need to get them to come uptown.”

The El Barrio Theatre Development Project, dubbed ELBA, would include the Hecksher Theatre on Fifth Ave. near 104th St.; the Red Carpet Theatre, on 124th St. and Second Ave.; the Julia De Burgos Cultural Center Theatre, on 106th St. and Lexington Ave., and the Poet’s Den Theatre on 108th St. near First Ave.

Most of the theaters are available for rental, but Rodriguez said some local groups can’t afford the space.

Rodriguez’ plan calls for $7.5 million for five years, including $2.5 million in city funding to cover theater programming, rent, capital improvements and district endowment. He has been floating the idea to local groups and investors for years, now.

Imam Souleimane Konate has found a new holy house in El Barrio on 115th St. near Madison Ave.

After seven long months without a holy house, a Harlem imam and his 1,500 followers have found a new home in El Barrio. Imam Souleimane Konate of Masjid Aqsa Mosque and his congregants were booted out of their house of prayer on Frederick Douglass Blvd. and W. 116th St. in October.

Their prayers have been answered.

After seven long months without a holy house, a Harlem Imam and his 1,500 followers have found a new home in El Barrio.

“I was always confident and positive that this day would come that we could have a new house in Harlem for the congregation to worship,” said Imam Souleimane Konate of Masjid Aqsa Mosque.

He and his congregants were booted out of the house of prayer on Frederick Douglass Blvd. near W 116th St. — their home for more than 15 years — last October after a rent dispute with the building’s landlord.

The staunch man of the cloth dished out $14,000 Thursday to rent two floors in the three-story Cafe Teatro Julia de Burgos building, on E. 115th St. near Madison Ave.

Longtime member Fanta Sylla was so thrilled by the news that she danced.

“I was so happy,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for this for almost eight months.”

Konate’s previous landlord, Joseph Rabizadeh, has said he wants to put up a residential complex where the former mosque and five other shuttered businesses were located. It would be a familiar sight along Frederick Douglass Blvd., which is home to rows of newly built high-rent apartments.

A pioneer activist in the Puerto Rican community was honored with a street re-naming in Harlem.

City officials and dozens of people gathered to rename 120th Street at Lexington Avenue after Yolanda Sánchez, who died in 2012.

Sánchez was born in East Harlem and spent more than 50 years helping to build community-based organizations that gave a voice to the Latino empowerment movement in the city.

Family members and those who worked with Sánchez remembered her impact on the community.

“She sponsored many conferences on youth empowerment, women’s empowerment, on improving our neighborhood. She was one of those people that when she walked into a room, everyone listened,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney.”

The force to be reckoned with with mama was that she didn’t like injustice. And she knows that in American we have what we want and our dreams are completed and she made sure that our dreams were completed,” said Sánchez’s daughter, Luz Celeste Reyes-Sánchez.

Sánchez helped found the Puerto Rican Association for Community Affairs, co-founded the National Latinas Caucus and was on the staff of ASPIRA, a group dedicated to helping Hispanic youth. – See more at:

Nuyorican prize-winning poet and children’s book author Willie Perdomo is Spanish Harlem’s El Barrio-born and a native to all things awe-inspiring. He has been published in New York Times Magazine and Bomb. The writer of Clementine!, Where a Nickel Costs a Dime, Postcards of El Barrio, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon, and Smoking Lovely, he’s won a number of literary awards and notable mentions, and is recognized for his incredible creative contributions to the world of poetry.

Perdomo grew up just a few short blocks away from Langston Hughes’s home in East Harlem, which inspired his children’s book, Visiting Langston, which earned him the Coretta Scott King Honor. The book idea came to him when he was visiting his mother in Harlem, and witnessed what he perceived to be a father and daughter entering Langston’s brownstone. Greatly influenced by Hughes and Harlem, Perdomo credits both for helping to create his personal tone and writing style.

“Langston Hughes was such an influence on my writing,” said Perdomo, “that I knew eventually I would try writing for children as well. Our children need all the books they can get their hands on. The thought of a young boy or girl reading Visiting Langston and being inspired to write a poem really excites me.”

He attended schools in the Harlem area until he won a scholarship to a private Quaker school in lower Manhattan called Friends Seminary. It was there where he began to take himself seriously as a writer. And, by the time he entered high school, he’d already been published in The New York Public Library’s publication, New Youth Connections.

Beyond everything, Perdomo is praised for his candid observations and his understanding of life inside and outside of El Barrio. Also, his take on life as an Afro-Boricua or, as how he’s referred to himself, a “Nigg**-Rican.” In his poem “Nigg**-Rican Blues­­­­­­­­­,” he makes astute observations about color, race, identity and self-identification. The interesting poem roused by the ever-tedious question, “What are you?,” meets a colorful and powerful statement:

Sp*c! Sp*c! No different than a Nigg**! Neglected, rejected, oppressed and depressed From banana boats to tenements Street gangs to regiments. . . Sp*c! Sp*c! I ain’t nooooo different than a Nigg**.

Perdomo was recently a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University, and he is co-founder/publisher of Cypher Books.­­­

Spanish Harlem, also known as “El Barrio” or East Harlem, is known for being the point of origin for a number of notable people: singer Marc Anthony, musician Frankie Cutlass, rapper Cam’ron, actor Al Pacino, rapper Tupac, poet Willie Perdomo, and bookstore owner Aurora Anaya-Cerda, who is the founder of La Casa Azul Bookstore.

The “crowdfunded” establishment was successfully supported by 500 funders after Anaya-Cerda ran the ‘40K in 40 days’ campaign. La Casa Azul Bookstore officially opened in El Barrio during the summer of 2012. (Photo : Latina book club)

La Casa Azul Bookstore opened in 2008 as an online resource that promoted literature by Latino writers, educational programming and children’s literature. The “crowdfunded” establishment was successfully supported by 500 funders after Anaya-Cerda ran the ’40K in 40 days’ campaign. La Casa Azul Bookstore officially opened in “El Barrio” during the summer of 2012.

The independently-owned vibrant literature hub offers its community a shared space for meetings, a bountiful retail selection, and a destination for events, book clubs, author signings, gallery shows, film screenings, workshops and writer conferences. La Casa Azul Bookstore (143 E. 103rd Street) boasts culturally-based programs; they raise public awareness; and manifest an appreciation of art, all to celebrate Latino literature and culture.

Anaya-Cerda’s past includes her being a zealous supporter of cultural events in “El Barrio;” she’s is the founder of the East Harlem Children’s Book Festival; she was a middle teacher in East LA before moving to New York; she’s a White House recognized Champion of Change; she’s won a numerous awards; and she is on several committees that pertain to Latinos, women and entrepreneurs.

La Casa Azul Bookstore’s irresistible charm has earned it certain media attention, and the interest of NYC & Company, the tourism sect of the city, who’ve made it their mission to tie in East Harlem as a part of the “Neighborhood x Neighborhood” campaign, which aims to draw attention to communities that are less frequented in the five boroughs. The bookstore will be featured in the tour that will also take visitors to El Museo del Barrio and the Aromas Boutique Bakery & Café.

Businessman, actor, and former City Council Candidate Edwin Marcial wants to give back to the East Harlem community by creating a local version of the Walk of Fame. ‘I see so many artists in Harlem that deserve to be there,’ he tells The News.

Edwin Marcial wants to create an El Barrio Walk of Fame to honor local legends and stars on 106th St. between 3rd and Lexington Avenues.

Why should Hollywood have more fun than East Harlem?

A businessman, actor and former City Council candidate wants to create an “El Barrio Walk of Fame” on E. 106th St. between Third and Lexington Aves. to honor East Harlem stars and legends.

“I want to give it to the people who do something for El Barrio,” said Edwin

Businessman, actor, and former City Council Candidate Edwin Marcial wants to give back to the East Harlem community. ‘I see so many artists in Harlem that deserve to be there,’ he tells The News.

Marcial. “I see so many artists in Harlem that deserve to be there.”

He dreams of a block dotted with marble plaques that would bear the likenesses of luminaries from the theater, music, dance, art, film and government, along with a brief bio and the name of the sponsor.

Local officials say they can see what Marcial means.

“A Walk of Fame in El Barrio would be another way to celebrate the many cultural icons and community leaders that have hailed from our neighborhood,” City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-East Harlem) said in a statement. “I look forward to working with members of the community to make this a reality.”

“We don’t always know our neighborhood history or neighborhood heroes, and this would be a great place to highlight some of that,” Brewer said.

The project — which would cost an estimated $500,000 per side of the block — is being spearheaded by Teatro Moderno Puertorriqueno Inc., an East Harlem arts and culture organization that Marcial heads.

The project — which would cost an estimated $500,000 per side of the block — is being spearheaded by Teatro Moderno Puertorriqueno Inc., an East Harlem arts and culture organization that Marcial heads.

A committee would select nominees and choose one man and one woman each year.

Marcial plans to reach out to divorced couple Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony to be the keynote figures of the annual enshrinement, which he describes as a red-carpet event accompanied by street vendors.

“It’s a way to empower the artists in East Harlem and the community,” said Marcial, who expects a portion of the project to be completed by 2015, if all goes well.

But the ambitious community man has a long road ahead.

Marcial, 74, who launched three failed bids for the East Harlem City Council seat, still needs the approval of Community Board 11, of which he is a member. Members have asked that he provide more information after the holidays.

He also needs the green light from City Council and the city Department of Transportation.

Marcial said he would request money from the city, but he intends to raise much of the dough on his own.

It’s unclear, he says, how much it will cost to maintain the Walk of Fame, but he believes the attraction will attract tourists and their wallets to the neighborhood.

Already , Marcial says, a local politician could be one of the first on the far-from-approved Walk of Fame, but he remained coy, saying: “It’s going to be a surprise.”

For years, East Harlem has been undergoing changes as more luxury housing moves into the neighborhood, and now one lifelong resident is documenting how that transformation is changing the area’s cultural identity. NY1’s Jon Weinstein filed the following report.

Andrew Padilla says 96th Street used to be the classic dividing line between the haves and have nots on Manhattan’s East Side. But he says that’s changed as gentrification has taken hold of his lifelong home of East Harlem. The 23-year-old documented these changes in a movie titled “El Barrio Tours”.”

I began to see friends, family, small business owners that I had known for decades that were getting pushed out of the borough, out of the city, out of the country, and I wanted to know why that was happening,” Padilla said.

The film talks about the rise in property values and how that change is pushing longtime residents out of the area. Padilla offers walking tours of the neighborhood too, where he points out the changes first hand.

“Traditionally how it works is, you’ll have them like this, where you’ve got a public housing project and a luxury condo, they might be right next door to each other, but that does not mean that these two communities get together,” Padilla said.

He also cites Jorge Vargas’s Justo Botanica as an example of what’s been happening here. It was forced to move to a much smaller space from a far better location on 104th Street.

“We were there since 1954 to 2012,” said Vargas. “The landlords threw us out.

“Padilla paid to make the film out of his own pocket. Now, he’s trying to raise enough money to take his movie to other cities and make links between what’s happening here and other parts of the country.

“The hope is to raise $15,000, and get the film out to 15 different cities all across the country that are dealing with gentrification. And begin to explore why they’re going through it, and what are the national trends, because it’s not just East Harlem that is dealing with this,” Padilla said.

Padilla is planning to screen his movie Thursday evening at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and hold a fundraiser on Friday night. For more information, visit elbarriotours.tumblr.com. –

Nearly every storefront is vacant or going out of business between 100th and 101st Sts. Locals blame higher rents

An East Harlem block has become a ghost town called Gentrification.

Eight of the nine storefronts on Lexington Ave. between 100th and 101st Sts. are out of business or going that way.

Lexington Ave. between 100th and 101st Sts. has almost entirely lost its commercial sector as eight of the block’s nine retail spaces either vacant or about to bite the dust — all citing high rents.

Santa Anita Grocery is the latest tenant call it quits, planning to close Aug. 3, after its lease jumped from $4,000 to $7,000.

“For five years everything here was great,” said grocery manager Meliton Torres. “But now it’s a lot of money they want.”

Meliton Torres’ Santa Anita Grocery will be going out of business on Aug. 3 because of rent hikes.

Santa Anita is the newest, but by no means the last victim of one landlord’s bid to upscale the block.

The block was purchased a year ago by Brooklyn-based E & M Associates a year ago. The company initially focused on renovating the residential units on the block — but a month ago, began seeking “upscale” vendors for the vacant spaces. Continue reading →

As the analysis of Mayor Bloomberg’s legacy continues in the coming months and years, low-income communities of color like mine will surely remember one thing about this final year in particular: the Mayor is presiding over a virtual fire sale of City-owned land which stands to deprive our communities of vital services and open space.

Mayor Bloomberg has made privatization a hallmark of his administration, which has been most salient in his administration’s rampant contracting out of municipal services. But in this final year, we are watching as this agenda goes into overdrive in an effort to have the next administration inherit as many of these projects as possible, when it might be too late to stop them. The net effect of these proposals is a dismantling of the local social service infrastructure that is so vital to low-income communities like mine.

If these development projects are carried out, not only will my community almost certainly see a reduction in social services and open space, but we will also see an acceleration in the displacement of local residents as El Barrio is increasingly marketed as an extension of the Upper East Side.

A most absurd example of these proposed development projects is one that would raze the School of Cooperative Technical Education, which only recently received millions of dollars in city-funded capital upgrades, so that a 40-story luxury tower could take its place. In itsRequest for Expressions of Interest, the city’s Educational Construction Fund reported that the area surrounding the school — just two blocks south of a housing development where NYCHA has proposed its infill development plan — has a median income of over $107,000.

And these types of deals are not only happening in my district. The Brooklyn Public Library had also proposed the sale of the historic Pacific branch for private development, which was recently averted (for the time being) in an agreement with the City Council.

In this final year of the Bloomberg administration, it’s hard not to feel like our communities’ public resources are under assault. If all of the aforementioned development projects in El Barrio/East Harlem are able to proceed unchecked and with no regard for needs of the communities, there will be serious consequences with regard to my district’s already fragile infrastructure.

This is a moment for everyone to come together — elected officials, community boards and local residents — to push back on this final frontier of Bloomberg-era privatization and to get commitments from all mayoral candidates that they will halt these efforts once in office and help protect our public assets.

Ninety-sixth Street was long the border between the Upper East Side and El Barrio, Spanish Harlem. To the north, the train tracks beneath Park Avenue leapt above ground, and Carnegie Hill’s regular grid and uniform prosperity gave way to a patchwork of public housing and poverty. Today, the old divide is less visible, and the blocks to its north are intriguingly animated by contrasts and surprises.

ALONG FIFTH AVENUE, elegantly fronted apartment buildings, medical complexes and museums run in a virtually continuous row up to 110th Street. There, 1 Museum Mile, a luxury condo designed with funky trapezoidal windows by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, will eventually house the Museum for African Art.

RAPHAEL MONTAÑEZ ORTIZ, an avant-garde artist, founded El Museo del Barrio in 1969 to introduce the neighborhood’s Puerto Rican culture into the city’s school curriculums. It moved from one public school to another until landing in its current home, on 104th Street, in the mid-1970s; its collection now includes more than 6,000 Latin American artworks. The building was once an orphanage, and its charming Heckscher Theater, decorated in the 1920s with fairy tale murals intended to delight young foundlings, dates from that time.

OPPOSITE THE MUSEUM, fin de siècle gates open onto the Central Park Conservatory Garden. The Italian, French and English sections have their own horticultural moods. At the heart of the English garden is a fountain dedicated to the author Frances Hodgson Burnett; the bronze boy and girl could be straight out of her book, “The Secret Garden.” Plenty of real children come to enjoy the blooms. Abdoulaye Fall, from Senegal, brings his son Elijah, 9, after school. “He likes to run among the fountains,” he said.

THE CARVER HOUSES, a 1950s public housing project named for George Washington Carver — who, born a slave, became director of agricultural research at Tuskegee Institute — stretches across 14 acres along Madison Avenue, from 99th Street to 106th. On Park Avenue, a stone viaduct supporting elevated train lines further disrupts the usual street pattern. But Lexington’s streets are bustling, and community gardens fill formerly vacant lots.

COLORFUL MOSAIC FLOWERS welcome readers to La Casa Azul, a Latino book shop on 103rd Street, between Lexington and Park Avenues. This weekend, Aurora Anaya-Cerda will celebrate her store’s first anniversary with an exhibition of five artists’ interpretations of Frida Kahlo in the gallery space one floor below. Outside, there’s a back garden for other cultural programs.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS CHANGING rapidly. The P.S. 109 building, at 99th Street, is becoming an “Artspace” with affordable housing for artists and 10,000 square feet for community arts organizations and nonprofits. But change brings loss as well as opportunity. With this in mind, the East Harlem Cafe will host East Harlem Preservation’s annual fund-raiser on June 5.